Miranda Shreuers is director of the Environmental Policy Research Center at the Free University in Berlin. She was asked to join the commission to determine Germany's nuclear policy after the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
"Germany had always looked at Japan as a peer, a country of similar technological capacity, so the question was really, could something like that happen in Germany?" she said.
After Fukushima, Germany reached something that could not be found in many other countries that have nuclear energy: a cross-party consensus that nuclear is not the future. That lies with other areas, with energy efficiency, with smart cities, with new technologies, BBC reported.
"We're going to phase out nuclear energy and, at the same time, phase out other fossil fuels: so a double phaseout; that really is historic," she added.
Germany has a history of division, so there is always concern that there can someday be new conflict and concern about the connection between conventional nuclear and military purposes of nuclear.
That contributed in the 1970s to the development of an environment peace movement and anti-nuclear movement that came together in a much stronger way than it did in most other places.
"The best thing that Germany can do is to present an alternative model that is very likely to be the more attractive model to populations around the world if we can show that it is, in fact, doable," she said.
"I find it hard to imagine that Germany could ever again live with nuclear power."
